I wanted to get a feel from the wider group here about whether they find explicit sexual description a crucial part of their reading experience. For me, the build up, the dialogs, and the mental image are often more interesting (to write and to read) than detailed sexual intercourse narrations.
How do others feel about that?
I agree, I prefer to focus on the build up, dialog, mental image, and also the psychology. Iāve often wondered if I should include more graphic descriptions in my stories, but nobodyās ever complained that I need more, so I guess Iām doing okay. 
Thanks for asking about this. Iāll be very interested to see what people say.
Same. Snuggling, getting aroused, kissing, and foreplay turn me on more that the sex tbh.
For me itās both. The build-up, the kinky situation (for me usually the loss of control) is the essence of the story.
But, for me, hot sex scenes as the result of the whole build-up are the icing on the cake.
It really depends. My own writing (āMountain Peaks Packā) has a LOT of non-sexual scenes. But thatās me. Others may want to write exclusively sex scenes. And readers may like solely sex, sexual tension scenes AND non-sexy scenes, and most likely a combo of all of the above. I donāt think thereās any one ācorrectā formula, besides the general rules of drama / fiction (foreshadowing, etc.)
I forget how far along the playlist function is (because Iām old and my brain is malfunctioning)
But I eventually hope to make āplaylistsā that basically groups my ā 
artƩ 
ā stories, on one list,
and my āhave a wank at the guy who gets turned into a table or somethingā stories in another list.
I think some of my readership (thereās a word) might have been negatively effected by the fact that in one story, a guy might be cumming into his friends dadās face that he turned into a pillow (or something) and the next, and alien accidentally banged up the human man and made him give birth out his dick, and now theyāre raising transgender alien hybrid children dealing with the pressures of high school (or something).
And I probably could alleviate some of it with less opaque description boxes, āwarning: this is a character study with little to no sex, not a quick wank!ā
But, Iād hate to give the game away for readers who prefer to just read and see where it goes.
Like, I guess I want it both ways.
I donāt want to blue ball people looking for a quick squeeze, (and subsequently get review bombed or just turn a reader off my stuff, when they would have loved the next story on my list)
but also, Iām too in love with the idea of catering to people who just want to read and see (and be surprised) where it goes, and not spoil their fun either.
So I dunno.
I agree with many of the other commenters here - I think sex is the dessert that you need to get through your main course to enjoy. That is, to say, while I certainly enjoy straight to sex hot stories, I really enjoy the tension, story, and dialogue that brings us to that point.
Good analogy.
To go one further (for me) I donāt even find the sex itself sexy, itās everything around it.
A joke I made years ago āā¦and then they had sex.ā
Like, if it were up to me, and I was being ā perhaps a bit chaotic and self-centred, I would write my 3~5k story and somewhere near the middle or end just write,
āā¦and then they had sex.ā
Iām the same. I find the erotic in what goes on outside the sex part. I write sex scenes mostly because theyāre kind of expected, but in my early stuff, they were always very short and summarized. Thatās why wanting to impose limits on what should appear in our stories with the excuse that anything not directly sexual is āsuspectā does not sit well with me. To me, to be able to give an accurate picture of the people targeted by mind control as normal, complex people, you need to see them doing normal, complex things that are not directly sexual. And also, since the beginning, I infused my stories with sci-fi/mystery stuff like the people behind The Games, Domination, etcā¦ and that adds to the stories a layer that is not directly erotic but entertaining on its own. Some people see that as added-on or tacked-on to the erotic parts, but thatās not the case. All of it is in the cause of producing an erotic effect, even if not directly erotic at the moment. Itās much more interesting to me to control real human beings and not turn them into mindless robots. I understand some like the mindless robots, but I never did.
As a side I find myself had zero interested at the sex part at all and usually skipped/fast-forward the intimacy part (no offence to the author).
Snuggling, kissing, teasing/foreplay, oral are fine but penetration just isnāt my thing.